The first four AMV Salads had good years on the previous convention "tours."

AMV Salad 5: Happy Meal has just begun making the rounds, starting with Otakon 2011.

There is no concept or theme for the time being. We're gonna kind of make this up as we go along. If we find a unifying theme among the majority of clips we receive after some time, we'll concentrate on that and press forward. For now, though, let's just cut loose and have fun!

The "tour" schedule for this series will remain as follows.
* One video per year.
* Each video will premiere at Otakon
* The regular venues which will host panels, barring any changes, include: NekoConAUSAIchibanConKatsuconMomocon (thanks to KireBlue)TekkoshoConZenkaikonAnime Mid Atlantic
The list will likely expand with the addition of conventions which will place the Salads on their late-night viewing schedules.

The "rules"[/b]:
* 1. HAVE FUN! BE CREATIVE! Most of all, BE FUNNY!
* 2. Time limit: 30 seconds max! Anything more will be considered case-by-case.
* 3. Your video must meet the standards required for being uploaded to a-m-v.org. Video source must be at least 80% anime. If you use live-action, keep it to a minimum. No extreme graphic violence, nudity, or sexual content. The "PG-13" standard is in effect here.
* 4. Use any and all editing skills at your disposal.
* 5. You can submit as many entries as you like, provided they are all different. Do not submit multiple entries that only have slight variations from each other (unless you contribute to whatever running joke we have planned).
* 6. Please refrain from publishing your clips to You Tube or other such public video web sites until after the project premieres at the next Otakon (2012 in this case). We kind of want to keep the contents of the final edit a surprise.
* 7. EVERYONE who enters this project will have at least one entry in the final compilation. The catch is you don't want to turn in just one entry and have it be a mediocre video among the other great submissions. Show us your best effort.
* 8. No no NO FANSUBS! The only exception to this rule is if you inserted your own as a means of parody or left a line in to further express the point of your video. Just make sure that whatever subtitles you leave in run with the context of the sound source somehow.
* 9. NO watermarks of any kind! If you don't know how to remove that thing from playback yet, consult the Help files in the respective program (most often, it's DivX).
* 10. Plagiarism will NOT be tolerated here! If you are found to have submitted the work of another editor without permission and credited yourself with its creation, you will be removed completely from the project AND reported to the 'org admins.
* 11. If you entered a trailer into a AMV contest (whether or not it won) and/or uploaded it to the 'org and wish to have it used in this project, that works as well.
Finally...
* 12. If I see unfulfilled potential in a clip and feel more can be done with it to get the point across effectively (or to make it funnier), I and/or other editors on this project will collaborate with you and we'll discuss the possibilities. Full credit will remain with the original editor after the final result is reached. Anyone who has participated in such consultations will be duly credited as "Associate Producers."

You may also send your unfinished "doomed to incompletion" AMVs for consideration.

And now, for future reference, the answer to the most common question associated with this series:"What is a production tag?"
Okay, just so we have a point of reference, it goes like this. It's that very brief bit of film / video you always see just before the opening sequence, scene, or credits for any movie. They also appear at the end of every television show (the Stoopid Monkey thing after Robot Chicken or the Bad Hat cartoon after House). Some examples are the MGM lion, Columbia Pictures statue, the Universal Studios globe, etc.

Why do you need to know this? Because I want one from each of you to accompany the closing credits. If you appeared in any of the previous AMV Salads and are satisfied with the one you sent, let me know so I can place it for this one. Otherwise, you have until the beginning of post-production to work on it.

The same tech standards apply to these things, but keep the length to under ten seconds if possible. If you don't have a "studio," just use your 'org name.

If any more guidelines are needed, this list will be modified to include them.

Gmail has a 25mb file transfer limit. Unless and until I can figure out how to set up an FTP account, I'm gonna need you all to send me your clips through SendSpace or Megaupload. Send me the download link(s) along with the clip information (editor, audio source, anime) to the same email address.
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Technical standards:
Be sure to send the highest quality version of your work possible. If you have the option of using DVD video rather than downloaded fansubs, please do so. Seriously. Go online and download DVD Decrypter and get a video conversion program that handles VOB files. It may be a couple additional steps in the editing process, but having a video with top-notch visual quality is worth the effort.

* File formats which are acceptable are (in this order of preference)
- mpeg2!!!
- avi...DivX, Lagarith, HuffYUV preferred. These codecs are available for free online so there's really no reason for everyone sending in this file format to not be able to stay within this parameter. If you are working from outside the US, please let me know if you foresee any problems with this.
- mpeg1 (if necessary)
- WMV (as an ABSOLUTE last resort - please render as DV-AVI).
Please do not send anything formatted for Quicktime or encoded as divx (the file format, not the codec).
- If you must send mp4, we will NOT accept anything encoded with or for Quicktime. Use XVid codecs please!

* The final compilation will be shown on full-screen mode when presented, so...
- 720x480 display size,
- a frame rate of 29.97 fps (NTSC),
- Progressive scan (NO interlacing)
- 4:3 aspect ratio
are preferred as a standard for your clips. Also, do whatever you can to avoid the letterbox appearing in the final video. If it can't be eliminated, I'll do what I can to fix it on my end. I'd rather not be placed in that position, but sometimes it can't be avoided. Consistency between clips is also a good idea.

* This project will be rendered in 720x480 resolution. Please don't use source video with resolution much smaller than this or it will look... bad... when resized to fit the display.

* I don't mind if audio is uncompressed. If you, for whatever reason, decide to compress before sending your clip, please use LAMEmp3 (stereo; 128kbps).

(I know this is a lot to swallow, but if my experience with editing AMV Salad 3 and 4 taught me nothing else, again, I learned that CONSISTENCY is top of the order! This applies mainly to visual quality, which is why these standards exist. If we can all keep within these guidelines, the end result will be spectacular...)

Oh come now, all of us know 'hard work time' starts in about 8 months We can pretend otherwise, but we all know the truth ^^ I'll try to take down some of the ones I didn't get finished for this year before Christmas so I have more of a head start.

I find the hardest part to be, with so many various parody things floating around not to mention the Hells themselves and all the seemingly endless AMV Hell minis, to be trying to make sure somebody hasn't beat me to it. I'd hate to be accused of ripping somebody off.

Yanno, I should post a list of clip sources that have been used so we have proof that "we did it first."
Also so we don't have an overload of a few anime.
It will help to give everyone a visible guideline for what we might need.

Oddly enough, I think that's why I end up doing some of the strangely obscure yet not obscure clips I do. Most of the ones I do end up being kind of difficult to pull off (which is technically pretty dumb of me), or so direct they're hiding from people. If Bill Burr's comedy hour had come out 4 years earlier, someone would have definitely noticed the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure connection before me I think, and yet it was just obscure enough to just as easily never have been noticed ^^ So I guess the best thing to do is to think of an idea, then kind of turn it sideways and look what you can do with it.

Don't be too worried about the AMV Hell Minis... the first season had some gems, but the second was really just a lot, and I mean a LOT of very quick clips. I noticed how much stronger AMVS's pacing is compared to those in terms of longer and shorter clips. It became very samey after a minute or two, even if it was still amusing.

The new AMV Hells being made, I don't know much about them. I'll probably submit some stuff from 4 and 5 again, and potentially something I make this year, since the audiences overlap, but not too much it seems. But don't worry too much about your ideas being the same as others. If you think you can do it better, run it by us, maybe we'd agree.

Also, if you want to make it different, the more character and connectivity we have between our clips, the more contiguous the running gags become. I say we aim for that more and more. It'll be tougher, and we may not hit it, but we can definitely try.

I have to request a large file upload because not even Zarx could take it below 199mb.
I took the nearly 1GB mpeg2 at 720x480 and used VDub to shrink it to a 460mb avi.
Then I ran it through Zarx and shrunk the resolution to 480x396 for a 192mb mp4.
I dunno what else to do.

Gaelstrom wrote:I actually had trouble keeping my 3 gig camera file OVER 100 megs when I used AutoGK. May be worth giving a shot?

What settings did you use?
I'm having trouble getting this thing to produce results even close to what you specified...
*tries a few more things*
Now all I get is failure to open the file before the video processes.
Not working at all for me...